WoW is pulling a HotS

[Yriel]

I agree that HotS streamlined the MOBA genre, much like WoW. I also think that HotS's weak playerbase has almost nothing to do with it.

It has more to do with Blizzard ignoring the MOBA genre until *after* LoL's success. Then they fought a legal war with Valve over the Dota trademark and lost. Valve ran with the Dota dev that Blizzard ignored for years, and Dota2 became a decent competitor to LoL. HotS is a good game, but Blizzard had so much egg on their faces before the game even launched. And when it did, it lacked a lot of features it has now.

Blizzard was late to the party but MOBA fans seem to be loyal to their respective game. If you look at battle royals, half a year ago people would have said that Fortnite had the genre in its death-grip but then Apex appeard and took a lot of its players. BR players seem to be constantly on the look for the next game while MOBA players never seem to move much at all.
You never know.

[Maudib]

It's not casuals vs. hardcore players anymore. Right now it's raidloggers vs. people who actually want to play the game (aka everybody else, be it casuals or whatever).

Pretty much this...

Except I see it as people who want to play an MMORPG, and people who want to play a lobby game.

The age of the Battle Royale is here. Blizzard is going for that new kid who only has an attention span of about 45 mins. Speed running a few Mythic + dungeons makes for a decent play session for them. Raiding a couple hours a couple nights week is pushing it.

But if they don't see progression in that 45 mins or couple hours... forget it "da game suxes".

This is Blizzard's (and by Blizzard I mean that asshat Ion) big failure. They are trying to cram a square peg into a round hole. You cannot make a MMORPG playable for small sessions, give away all the progression as rewards for logging in, then expect people to want to play more of it.

But truth be told... WoW truly is doomed... because Blizzard doesn't care about releasing a quality game... they care about releasing a profitable game. Don't get me wrong.. Azeroth isn't dead... it's just waiting to be reborn on mobile. Some pseudo MMO-ARPG is coming... and modern WoW will soon be dropped... using the Classic series to soak up as much $$ as they can before finally letting WoW die.

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No it wasn't. WoW was NEVER hardcore. Stop it with that nonsense.

Hardcore is a transient term. A game that requires 20= hour s a week for meaningful progression could be considered hardcore.

A game someone COULD play 40 hours a week is hardcore.

A game someone WANTS to play for 20-40 hours a week... is not BfA. lol

[Daish]

This ENTIRE thing falls apart when you realize the most casual friendly expansion Wrath that people glorify these days was HYPER casual friendly and had over 11 million subs.

i remember wiping for hours in 5 man dungeons many bosses had 1 shot mechanics in WOTLK it was not casual friendly

Wintergrasp was awesome forcing the factions to fight over access to the world boss

[Soon-TM]

No it wasn't. WoW was NEVER hardcore. Stop it with that nonsense.

Depends on what you compare it with. Vanilla was very casual when compared to the likes of EQ/UO, but almost hardcore when compared to BfA - at least in the outdoor world.

[Stormbreed]

WOTLK was stupidly hardcore compared to current game. get out.

Yet, it wasn't. And you clearly didn't play back then.

[ButterBeast]

WOTLK was stupidly hardcore compared to current game. get out.

Im sorry that you FEEL the game was not made casual in wotlk.


It's definitely when it started.

[Claymore]

I think the OP's post is a tremendous over-simplification, but not entirely off-base.

Wrath WAS incredibly popular, and indeed, it had arguably the most catch-up mechanics of any expansion to date. I think it was also helped that A) it had already build a MASSIVE following from the hardcore gaming community during Vanilla and TBC, and B) it was able to lean heavily on Arthas and his story, which was both something fans wanted more of, and was a character easily relateable as a "mainstream" character (very much in the vein of Darth Vader; people love fall-from-grace storylines).

Ultimately, while Wrath did a lot of great things, I think part of the issue is that we didn't really feel the true ramifications for its many changes until Cataclysm. Really, Cataclysm wasn't *MECHANICALLY* that different from Wrath. But it no longer had a story or setting that people connected with (Blizzard really hit on the rise "viking" stuff in pop-culture), and we started feeling the negative impact of changes originally set during Wrath. For example, Dungeon Finder was a phenomenal tool when people were used to spending sometimes hours putting together or finding groups. But by Cataclysm, we'd begun to see people abusing the system, being assholes with zero consequence, stuff like that.

I really do think Blizzard would do well to make WoW more of an "RPG" once again, giving more choice to players (even if it means some "choices" are less competitive than others), making the world something you interact with more, personally investing more into individual characters (I would actually like to see Specs made a little more "permanent", maybe only getting one talent reset a month or having to "un-level" to refund skill points one at a time).

I'd also say, the story has really kind of gone off the rails (and a "faction war" ceases to be interesting when -- by simple virtue of both factions being playable -- there CANNOT be a definitive "victor" in the conflict). I think Blizzard should consider some kind of a "reset button". I look forward to WoW Classic for much the same reason, but I think it would be a huge benefit if some major event occurred, and it completely changed the world. I've personally posed that maybe a time-skip would work; maybe almost all life on Azeroth is extinguished, but the Titan-Soul of Azeroth protects you and a few others, and "re-awakens" you in the distant future, when nature has reclaimed most of the world. Sort of a "Zelda: Breath of the Wild" vibe, where you're considered an "Ancient" by the tribes and clans that have sprung up since.

It would also be a great way to give the entire world a face-lift, and maybe reconcile some of the weird time-gaps between expansions (I suppose Warlords of Draenor could remain largely the same).

[bullseyed]

People just missing the point really. 5 % of people (maybe) cleared HC raids, casuals didn't clear top raids any more then than they do now. The game itself isn't top content, it's everything else, and it was not casual friendly like it is now, you would never, ever get as good gear or progress your character as far as a gladiator or a top raider without doing those things. Now literally the only required thing is time spent.

In current game player power is equalized completely, time put in equals power, with nothing else in the equation. And it's a single player experience. Go figure.

Go ahead and link your gray parse LFR/Normal warcraftlogs page.

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Maybe if all you do in this game is warfronts and pet battles...

No, not even then.

Nax / OS were a joke on every difficulty, except maybe 3 drakes 10-man where you just needed half a brain to not get burned by the lava wave. Need I remind you that Nax was also re-hashed content? The Nexus raid was also a disappointing mess.

BFA's LFR is more hardcore than WOTLK's release raids. Change my mind.

The only thing I honestly kindof wish was in BfA is a structured WPvP zone ala Wintergrasp, instead of warmode; But even that was largely just a baby's first raid available to more numerous faction, that dropped tier sets for 0 effort.

I mean Warfronts is just Wintergrasp against NPCs.

[Zenfoldor]

The history of HotS:
It started out being called Blizzard Dota. It had the Dota map, it had items, it had everything that was needed to be concidered a competetor to LoL and Dota 2. It was just a SC2 custom map. Blizzard showed it off on a Blizzcon at an early stage, and people really loved it!

Then they decided to move it out of SC2 to their own game. Here, they started "innovating". They changed name to Heroes of the Storm, removed items, they made some gimmicky maps etc. to a point it could no longer be concidered a competetor to the MOBAs anymore. "Streamline and make it more accessable!". Nobody wanted to switch from LoL or Dota 2 to this game. Basically telling the LoL and Dota 2 players that love blizzard "you are not the target audience anymore, sorry". Sure there were a small amount that switched, but LoL and Dota 2 did NOT lose any noticable playerbase when HotS released. Blizzard went from targeting the MOBA community to caitering to the casual MOBA community that BARELY EXISTS. The game is now basically in "maintenance mode", it's dead.

The same can be said about WoW. "Streamline and make it more accessable!". The people that enjoyed Classic and TBC WoW are today told "you are not the target audience anymore, sorry" and instead they target this casual MMORPG community that BARELY EXISTS. See the resemblence?

And they are wondering why the numbers keep dropping. Wonder if they even see the parallel to HotS. Probably not, so expect WoW in "maintenance mode" in a few years.

TL;DR: Heroes of the Storms is a MOBA made for people that does not like MOBAs. BfA is a MMORPG made for people that does not like MMORPGs.

Slightly off topic, but it reminds me of game streaming. It's gaming for people that do not like gaming. I've also been told "you are not the target anymore" about it quite a few times since the google announcement as well, when I complain about touch controls on a tablet, or latency in a single player offline game, or the(lack of) necessity of a subscription model that is being pushed anyway, so customers can no longer vote with their wallet, and no longer demand quality games because the price of their subscription(in their mind) is cheap, so cheap games are good enough.

[Nnyco]

Better than: "Pay 1.000.000 gold to be mythic geared."

If you require boosting to raid mythic, thats on you then.

[avx81]

WOTLK was stupidly hardcore compared to current game. get out.

Did I play the same expansion? Because I recall raiding being insanely easy in WOTLK. Naxx was a complete joke of a raid. Bosses easier than LFR. I raid today with the same guild I did then. We plowed through most of icecrown with the exception of Lich King 25. Let's compare that to today. I can promise you almost all of mythic is harder than Icecrown heroic. You could easily pug most of Icecrown heroic also. You are not going to see pugs clearing up to Jaina mythic. I would actually be surprised if the average pug (average not a bunch of mythic raiders on alts) are able to go more than 2-3 bosses.

[Firedemon]

The history of HotS:
It started out being called Blizzard Dota. It had the Dota map, it had items, it had everything that was needed to be concidered a competetor to LoL and Dota 2. It was just a SC2 custom map. Blizzard showed it off on a Blizzcon at an early stage, and people really loved it!

Then they decided to move it out of SC2 to their own game. Here, they started "innovating". They changed name to Heroes of the Storm, removed items, they made some gimmicky maps etc. to a point it could no longer be concidered a competetor to the MOBAs anymore. "Streamline and make it more accessable!". Nobody wanted to switch from LoL or Dota 2 to this game. Basically telling the LoL and Dota 2 players that love blizzard "you are not the target audience anymore, sorry". Sure there were a small amount that switched, but LoL and Dota 2 did NOT lose any noticable playerbase when HotS released. Blizzard went from targeting the MOBA community to caitering to the casual MOBA community that BARELY EXISTS. The game is now basically in "maintenance mode", it's dead.

The same can be said about WoW. "Streamline and make it more accessable!". The people that enjoyed Classic and TBC WoW are today told "you are not the target audience anymore, sorry" and instead they target this casual MMORPG community that BARELY EXISTS. See the resemblence?

And they are wondering why the numbers keep dropping. Wonder if they even see the parallel to HotS. Probably not, so expect WoW in "maintenance mode" in a few years.

TL;DR: Heroes of the Storms is a MOBA made for people that does not like MOBAs. BfA is a MMORPG made for people that does not like MMORPGs.

You can't compare them like that since they are totally different.

For example, if HotS was the same as DotA, games would still last around the 1 hour mark and players can play and "progress" them whenever they have free time (except of course for people participating in tournaments but that's a different story).

Now if BfA had the same philosophy as TBC a huge chunk of the player base would be unable to progress they characters past a certain point. Raids required a guild, guilds required availability on a schedule. pretty much anyone that didn't have the time to commit to 4 hours for at least 2-3 days would be stuck running heroics and an entry raid, as was the case in BC.

The "hardcore target audience" is still being maintained with Mythic raids, it's just that the others now have access to it in a different form. Also it is the hardcore community the one that barley exists.

Is it good or bad to be accessible in other difficulties .. well it has positives and negatives. Positive is obvious, that everyone can experience some content in some form. The negative is that it takes the feel of accomplishment and prestige. If in BC you were one of those guys that managed to kill Kael'thas now if you kill Jaina on mythic, you're just another guy that killed her.

[roboscorcher]

Blizzard was late to the party but MOBA fans seem to be loyal to their respective game. If you look at battle royals, half a year ago people would have said that Fortnite had the genre in its death-grip but then Apex appeard and took a lot of its players. BR players seem to be constantly on the look for the next game while MOBA players never seem to move much at all.
You never know.

That's a good point, Sunk Cost Fallacy does play into LoL's dominance as well. I wonder if it applies less when paying for a BattlePass that mostly offers limited-time items.

I also think that the general Battle Royale population is less loyal to any single company than MOBA fans. There are more casuals and new gamers in BR games, from my experience. These people are more likely to try new titles than veterans.

[Jibjub]

This ENTIRE thing falls apart when you realize the most casual friendly expansion Wrath that people glorify these days was HYPER casual friendly and had over 11 million subs.

At the time, it was very casual-friendly for an MMO. However, you could argue there is a "sweet spot" for an MMO to cater to both audiences. I think Wrath did that well (even with its innovative hard-mode for raid bosses). That pendulum has kept on swinging though...

[SpellCleave]

I love how all these posts come from people who obviously didn't play the game at the time.

WoW got successful because it was the most casual MMO on the market.

For real. All I ever hear from people who were really in it from the beginning or got a good chunk (Last 6 months of classic myself) is that it was made to be casual when it came out.

[voidillusion]

Did I play the same expansion? Because I recall raiding being insanely easy in WOTLK. Naxx was a complete joke of a raid. Bosses easier than LFR. I raid today with the same guild I did then. We plowed through most of icecrown with the exception of Lich King 25. Let's compare that to today. I can promise you almost all of mythic is harder than Icecrown heroic. You could easily pug most of Icecrown heroic also. You are not going to see pugs clearing up to Jaina mythic. I would actually be surprised if the average pug (average not a bunch of mythic raiders on alts) are able to go more than 2-3 bosses.

Overall LK was easy, early raids and dungeons were a joke yes.

Still, the later dungeons, some of Ulduar HMs and ICC Hc without the buff saved the expansion imo. They might not be the pinacle of dificulty this game has ever seen, but it's unfair to consider the expansion that gave us Mimiron HM, Yogg HM and LK hc as insanely easy, they were challenging and most important for me, they were fun!

[Kralljin]

Did I play the same expansion? Because I recall raiding being insanely easy in WOTLK. Naxx was a complete joke of a raid. Bosses easier than LFR. I raid today with the same guild I did then. We plowed through most of icecrown with the exception of Lich King 25. Let's compare that to today. I can promise you almost all of mythic is harder than Icecrown heroic. You could easily pug most of Icecrown heroic also. You are not going to see pugs clearing up to Jaina mythic. I would actually be surprised if the average pug (average not a bunch of mythic raiders on alts) are able to go more than 2-3 bosses.

Basing off the argument how "casual friendly" Wotlk was compared to BfA is based on the difficulty ignores crucial aspects of the equation.

BfA has systems that Wotlk simply did not have.

Wotlk didn't have a weekly Warfront / Warfront World Boss that had the chance of throwing an heroic (or ~25Man of [current Wotlk raid) at you.
You had Archavons vault, which at best only dropped Pants / Gloves of the current Tier set, that's it.

On a difficulty level, i would argue BfA has far harder content (ignoring the decade that passed between these expansions), however in Wotlk the catch up / gearing process was way more streamlined.

No M+.
No Weekly cache.
No Warfronts.
No LFR.
PvP gear being strictly worse for PvE.

In Wotlk, you still didn't move forward if you didn't log in, you had to get badges in order to buy an item every ~two weeks.
In BfA, you can log in, do your weekly M+, Warfront, World Boss, and still move decently forward in terms of gearing.

Wotlk was less casual friendly in terms of gearing, but had less difficult content overall.
BfA is more casual friendly in terms of gearing, but has more difficult content overall.

I am not disagreeing with you, but we shouldn't limit this discussion to difficulty, the "game modes" and their rewards (or the quantity) have expanded considerably since Wotlk.

[Aggrophobic]

Literally the one to which I refer. You talked (with that person) about content "hardcoreness", and I pointed out to you angle of inaccuracy at level which you are trying to compare it in (due to concepts separation of content and progress in devs' heads and consequently - design)
------
if in brief:
...if you compare content, then new one is many times easier, and if you compare progress, then due to its technical component (boss mechanics/unattainability due to characteristics of itemization) it's easier in old version, which doesn't prevent it from being more difficult for other reasons (raids' group mechanics (threat vs resource managment, preparing), although this is also a question with regard to "illegal" toolkit size, which most modern players (had to?) have), which means that answer isn't simple and comparison process requires additional parameters;
...when we talked about progress before, we also mostly meant specific content available to you and now this won't be true (raids are content and progress, bosses are stages of content and progress, but modes aren't any of it since you already saw everything here; it's just a little bit more of progress (ilvl/ap?), but not content, if gameplay is interesting enough, it could turn into something resembling PvP seasons and can be quite entertaining, but, I repeat, neither this nor the other is content and you know it; competitions (E-sport?) is virtually lack of content and gameplay is the only thing (together with "watching its shou") that they offer you)
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Actually, everything is written there, I don't see what could create some kind of difficulty in understanding

ps. The key: "current" complexity system (most progress part) has nothing to do with content, unlike "previous" one.

Still makes no sense what so ever.

[Orwell7]

Pretty much this...

Except I see it as people who want to play an MMORPG, and people who want to play a lobby game.

The age of the Battle Royale is here. Blizzard is going for that new kid who only has an attention span of about 45 mins. Speed running a few Mythic + dungeons makes for a decent play session for them. Raiding a couple hours a couple nights week is pushing it.

But if they don't see progression in that 45 mins or couple hours... forget it "da game suxes".

This is Blizzard's (and by Blizzard I mean that asshat Ion) big failure. They are trying to cram a square peg into a round hole. You cannot make a MMORPG playable for small sessions, give away all the progression as rewards for logging in, then expect people to want to play more of it.

But truth be told... WoW truly is doomed... because Blizzard doesn't care about releasing a quality game... they care about releasing a profitable game. Don't get me wrong.. Azeroth isn't dead... it's just waiting to be reborn on mobile. Some pseudo MMO-ARPG is coming... and modern WoW will soon be dropped... using the Classic series to soak up as much $$ as they can before finally letting WoW die.

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Hardcore is a transient term. A game that requires 20= hour s a week for meaningful progression could be considered hardcore.

A game someone COULD play 40 hours a week is hardcore.

A game someone WANTS to play for 20-40 hours a week... is not BfA. lol

Umm, ending with MoP, the game still had that "45 min" reward system -> VALOR/justice points. With a weekly cap, so players won't feel overwhelmed.
It worked.
They destroyed it.
BlizzTM

[Triceron]

In Classic and TBC the game grew in popularity. In Wrath it stopped growing. It was also not the "most casual friendly expansion" at all. Do I need to mention it did not have LFR?

Classic and TBC exploded due to word of mouth on a new and growing genre. WoW made MMO's accessible to casual audiences, who treated this as a new experience despite MMO's existing many years prior. WoW WAS the Casual MMO from the very beginning. Its competition was the likes of Everquest, Asheron's Call and FFXI, which were much more difficult games to get into.

I mean this argument is like saying MOBAs are stopping growth now and trying to draw a conclusion that it's because of 'recent changes to the genre' rather than looking at the bigger picture - that MOBAs are an aging genre like any other.

Battle Royales are the big thing right now. In 6 years from now, when populations start to dwindle, should we all be pointing at changes to the game as the reason why people start to leave? Gaming trends are predictable because the gamer demographic is fickle and always looking for new experiences. Aging games will always reach dropoff points.